Published: Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 01:31 AM.

The number of teams competing in each sport impacts conference schedule. More so, the uncertainty is causing pause for schools seeking non-conference opponents — and how many of those might be needed.

Iamarino said he has “a lot of sympathy” for those handling scheduling.

Within the conference office “they’re probably on version (No.) 38 of the 2014 schedule,” he said. “It’s up to us in the conference office to make it all work. … The other wrinkle in all this is, the odds are that not all the (potential new) schools are going to play in every one of our 19 championship sports.”

In other developments:

■ Appalachian State and Georgia Southern, like College of Charleston this school year, will remain in championship contention for all sports in 2013-14 except for the aforementioned football season unless there’s a bylaw change.

■ Appalachian State athletics director Charlie Cobb broached the subject of holding Southern Conference associate membership, for instance, for his school in men’s soccer and wrestling, Iamarino said.

The Southern Conference has little choice but to look for new members after losing three schools during this academic year, conference commissioner John Iamarino said Wednesday.

The league, which has one of the richest traditions in collegiate athletics, will be down to nine core members by the 2014-15 school year if it doesn’t restock.

This week, Appalachian State and Georgia Southern announced they’ll leave in 15 months to join the Sun Belt Conference. That comes after College of Charleston, in the fall, determined it would bolt for the Colonial Athletic Association after the current school year.

“I feel very good about the options available to the SoCon,” Iamarino said. “We have been quietly contacted by enough schools to fill a brand-new conference. We will have quality options, I think, available to us.”

Iamarino said a decision could be made to expand to 10, 12 or 14 members.

Membership will be the top focus when a specially called meeting is held next month with the presidents / chancellors and athletics directors of the nine remaining schools. The conference’s annual spring meeting will be held in late May in Hilton Head, S.C.

By then, decisions should be made about potential new members. If new schools are to be in place for the 2014-15 school year, they should be identified and committed by this June so they could give the conferences they’re leaving a full year’s notice, Iamarino said.

“I feel we need to get going on some sort of direction,” he said. “I’ve heard that a lot: ‘We want a strong Southern Conference.’ And that’s what we’re trying to deliver.”

As Georgia Southern and later Appalachian State officially announced their departures Wednesday, Iamarino, who formerly worked for the Sun Belt Conference, said it was merely coincidence that he was wearing a black sweater.

“It stings, there’s no question about that,” he said. “We knew that this was coming. To their credit, both Appalachian State and Georgia Southern, they’ve been very upfront with us ever since the feasibility studies have been done.

“We also feel good about where we are as a conference. (We hope this will) re-energize and refocus our membership about what lies ahead.”

Iamarino said Sun Belt Conference commissioner Karl Benson also had been helping in keeping his office in tune with developments.

Still, the changes are disturbing.

“It takes your breath away,” Iamarino said. “I’m trying really hard to look forward to this as an opportunity. … The flip side is at some point in the near future, I hope, we’ll be able to have a press conference where I’m welcoming someone into the conference and we all have smiles on.”

The discussions about Southern Conference membership are bound to vary. For instance:

■ Should there be priority on identifying schools that play scholarship-level football?

Iamarino said one of his goals is to bolster the profile of basketball in the conference so that the league champions receiver better seeds for the NCAA Tournament.

■ What’s the impact on baseball, particularly with College of Charleston, Appalachian State and Georgia Southern all recent NCAA Tournament participants?

“We don’t want to sacrifice that sport,” Iamarino said, pointing out that the conference has rated as high as the seventh-best nationally among leagues in baseball. “We feel that’s an important sport for us.”

■ Without Georgia Southern, will there be emphasis to keep a presence in Georgia?

■ What are some limitations?

“I can assure you we are not looking at any Division II programs,” Iamarino said.

Here to stay?

Meanwhile, it’s important to keep the other members on board with the ever-shifting conference alignments, Iamarino said.

“You just have to take people at their word,” he said. “As one of my colleagues said, the members are with you right up until the day they tell you they’re leaving.

“I do feel pretty good about the core of nine we have, but things can change. We’re trying to be as flexible and nimble as we possibly can.”

Iamarino declined to give specifics of other member schools keeping the conference abreast of their membership statuses aside from Davidson’s situation, which included being courted by the CAA last year. He said Davidson was in communication with the Southern Conference — and its inclination to remain in the league.

Elon University president Leo Lambert has declined to discuss the school’s status regarding conference affiliation.

This week, most of Elon’s high-ranking athletics department administrators are unavailable to discuss the impact of the Appalachian State and Georgia Southern departures because they’re with the university’s golf teams on a spring-break tour in Europe.

Iamarino said it would be ideal for the NCAA to put a moratorium on conference jumping so the landscape could settle, but he said the so-called power conferences would never agree to that.

All movement clearly isn’t in best interest of college athletics, Iamarino said.

“We’re in the middle of March Madness … and we’re talking about schools leaving schools where they’ve been 30 or 40 years,” he said.

Football factors

Appalachian State and Georgia Southern are long-time football powers on the national level, but they’ll be out of the mix for future Football Championship Subdivisions (formerly Division I-AA) titles.

Football games and statistics involving Appalachian State and Georgia Southern will count in 2013 in the Southern Conference, so all the teams will play an eight-game league football schedule. Both those schools will be removed from the standings when determining the league champion, but the games against that duo will count for the other seven football-playing schools.

Appalachian State and Georgia Southern must initiate the process of meeting higher scholarship levels that would make them ineligible for the FCS playoffs. Because of that, Southern Conference bylaws mean neither will be eligible to win the conference championship in football.

“We didn’t want to run the risk of losing our automatic bid to the FCS playoffs,” Iamarino said, noting the official league champion is guaranteed a spot in the national playoffs.

This isn’t punishment from the conference, Iamarino said, but rather a necessity for the departing football-playing schools in order for them to meet NCAA criteria for their moves. In 2014, the teams will be eligible for the Sun Belt Conference championship, but won’t be permitted to participate in bowl games.

This means that an actual third-place Southern Conference finish might be enough to land a guaranteed FCS playoff spot in 2013.

Further, Iamarino said the decisions by Appalachian State and Georgia Southern are strictly tied to “simply us not being able to provide them what they want out of their football programs.”

Scheduling shifts

If only seven football teams are in place for the 2014 season, that would create two more non-conference vacancies for each of the seven schools that remain. Other sports could have similar sudden scheduling issues.

“There is a concern that we’re going to have several sports that are going to be severely negatively impacted if we don’t add (new members),” Iamarino said.

The number of teams competing in each sport impacts conference schedule. More so, the uncertainty is causing pause for schools seeking non-conference opponents — and how many of those might be needed.

Iamarino said he has “a lot of sympathy” for those handling scheduling.

Within the conference office “they’re probably on version (No.) 38 of the 2014 schedule,” he said. “It’s up to us in the conference office to make it all work. … The other wrinkle in all this is, the odds are that not all the (potential new) schools are going to play in every one of our 19 championship sports.”

In other developments:

■ Appalachian State and Georgia Southern, like College of Charleston this school year, will remain in championship contention for all sports in 2013-14 except for the aforementioned football season unless there’s a bylaw change.

■ Appalachian State athletics director Charlie Cobb broached the subject of holding Southern Conference associate membership, for instance, for his school in men’s soccer and wrestling, Iamarino said.